Gender, Technology and Development recent issues

Trans-local Livelihoods and Connections: Embedding a Gender Perspective into Migration Studies

Truong, T.-D., Gasper, D. — 2009-06-25

Practices of Male Labor Migration from the Hills of Nepal to India in Development Discourses: Which Pathology?

Sharma, J. R. — 2009-06-25

This article provides a critique of authoritative development discourses on the migration of men from Nepal to India. Drawing on my ethnographic fieldwork at multiple sites, I illustrate how migration is not perceived as a problem by migrants themselves but as an integral practice in people's livelihoods. Many see migration to work in India as an escape from a difficult socio-economic, cultural and familial situation and an opportunity for young men to experience a distant place, experiment with the pleasures and possibilities of consumption and earn and remit money home to fulfil their obligations as responsible men with the hope for upward socio-economic mobility of their families. The authoritative discourse is criticized for failing to comprehend the socio-cultural meanings associated with this form of human movement and for viewing ‘migration’ and ‘migrants’ as aberrant. The presence of a disjuncture between the authoritative discourses and the complex ethnographic reality raises important questions about the politics of migration in international development.

Living in Transition: How Kyrgyz Women Juggle Their Different Roles in a Multi-local Setting

Thieme, S. — 2009-06-25

The major destinations for labor migrants from rural southern Kyrgyzstan are Russia, Kazakhstan and Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan. As well as searching for better income, younger men and women also migrate for educational reasons and to escape from traditions such as early marriage. Although these migration processes make both women and men vulnerable, women face particular forms of vulnerability that intersect with one another. Middle-aged migrating women do experience a devaluation of their education and struggle to handle the multiple roles and expectations of being breadwinner, mother, wife and daughter-in-law, supporting the older and young generation left behind. The youngest generation, born during this transitional period since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, faces its own challenges of trying to take advantage of economic liberalization. Using an approach, which views the multi-local settings of families from women's perspectives, this article provides insights into perceptions and experiences of migration and their consequences for different generations.

Migration Patterns and Influence of Support Networks: A Case Study of West Africans in the Netherlands

Hamer, M. C.-d. — 2009-06-25

This article explores the influence of support networks in the migration process of West African migrants to the Netherlands. Taking a case-oriented biographic approach, the article analyzes the migration stories of several West African migrants with a focus on the networks that facilitated their journey and their initial stages of integration. It highlights the role of support networks in different moments of the migratory process—pre-departure, arrival and settlement—and discusses the scope of support and the obligations that emerge from these social interactions. The article shows that respondents received different types of support, from different types of groups, at different stage of their migration, which shaped the distinctive features of their individual trajectories. An interesting aspect is the support that settled West African migrants give to West African newcomers, which suggests the existence of a regional collective identity. Limited resources, however, pose serious constraints on this type of support.

Gender, Class and Nation in a Transnational Community: Practices of Identity among Undocumented Migrant Workers from Vietnam in Bangkok

Yen, N. T. H., Truong, T.-D., Resurreccion, B. P. — 2009-06-25

This article discusses the social construction of identities in transnational migration as experienced by a community of undocumented Vietnamese service workers in Bangkok. Being of rural origins, undocumented and on a temporal, sequential and circular move without a definite time line, these migrant workers are set apart from the larger and more established overseas Vietnamese community and knowledge workers. Members of the overseas community are active in recruiting and employing them. The transmigrant workers form their own community, weaving gender practices with identities such as family and community, ethnicity and nation to ensure mutual protection and support. Conflating femininity with ethno-marking lends legitimacy to the control over transmigrant women as workers and their identity as Vietnamese. Identified also as homemakers, these women also carry responsibilities for caring and maintaining the well-being of this community. Displacing their resistance and gender conflicts takes place by way of redefining social bonds in the community as kinship relations.

Connections and Disconnections: How Afghan Refugees in the Netherlands Maintain Transnational Family Relations

Muller, P. — 2009-06-25

This article explores how Afghan refugees in the Netherlands maintained relations with family members who stayed behind in Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan. These transnational relations are characterized not only by a geographical distance but also by an economic, legal and cultural distance and by fundamental differences in terms of safety and security. Embedded in a world of reciprocity, remittances to stay-behinds were one visible, unidirectional feature interacting with three other features of support (bringing stay-behinds to the West, keeping in touch, and returning). The article demonstrates that connection and disconnection can be seen as different moments in a continuum with different mechanisms for relationship maintenance. Remittances not only symbolize connection to the country of origin; in cases of limited means in which sending money was prioritized over other forms of practical, social and cultural support, they could also have a disconnecting impact on transnational relations as well. In these relations, tension arising from the transformation of gender identity was observed in several cases.

Beyond Instrumentalism: Interrogating the Micro-dynamic and Gendered and Social Impacts of Remittances in Senegal

Lo, M. S. — 2009-06-25

Remittances have become orthodoxy in developing countries such as Senegal, prominently framed in development discourses, and premised on the assumptions that they are a pathway to poverty alleviation and household livelihood security. However, what eludes critical scrutiny are their micro-dynamic and gendered and social impacts in the context of a new wave of risky and deadly migration patterns in West Africa, stemming largely from the lure of an economic El Dorado in the peripheral centers of Western Europe.

This article engages in the gender dimensions and externalities of remittances by contrasting the trans-local connections (geographical, social and economic) and, their complex interplay with the instrumental paradigm of remittances. It argues that the instrumental paradigm of remittances misconstrues or ignores entrenched structural, relational and gendered dynamics that mediate such transfers. Remittances intersect with power structures that potentially reinforce dependency and economic vulnerability. The article shows the need to recast conceptually and analytically migration, trans-local connectivity and remittances in a more dynamic framework that accounts for the political economy of migration and its trans-local intersections and dynamics. The complex web of socio-economic relations, added to the ambivalent structure of remittances, merit critical inquiry to ensure that remittances translate into positive and broader socio-economic change, rather than becoming a social trap or fossilized and maladaptive circuits of dependency and subordination at the local, community and household levels.

Engaging in Trans-local Management of Households: Aspects of Livelihood and Gender Transformations among Sri Lankan Women Migrant Workers

Pinnawala, M. — 2009-06-25

Accounting for 70 percent of Sri Lankan migration to West Asia, women migrant workers in domestic services have today become the principal income earners of many households. Using data collected from a group of returned migrants in three communities in the area of Kandy in Sri Lanka, this article adds a new dimension to theorizing about migration as livelihood diversification. It shows that the spatial separation of migrants from their families has meant that issues of resources use and management are taken outside the confines of the household. This results in the separation of earner from manager, and creates spatially separated parallel power centers within the transnational family space with the manager of income as the center of power in local family/household space and earner of income (woman migrant) as the center of power in the new livelihood space. Gender and kinship are two important factors in determining the selection of the manager while the earner is away, and in shaping supportive social networks to support the basis of relative strength of the two main actors.

Remittances and 'Social Remittances': Their Impact on Livelihoods of Thai Women in the Netherlands and Non-migrants in Thailand

Suksomboon, P. — 2009-06-25

For Thai migrant women in the Netherlands, sending remittances is a crucial way to uphold their relationships with their kin and communities in Thailand. This article makes the case that the impacts of remittances on migrant women's families and their sending communities are uneven. Apart from the economic and political determinants, underscored in previous studies, this article suggests that the imagination of affluence in Europe, the cultural idea of saving face and family norms significantly influence how remittances are deployed and interpreted by the women and their natal families, and to some extent their Dutch spouses. ‘Social remittances’—ideas, identities and cultural practices—are also transmitted to the receiving country. These social remittances expose non-migrants to global cultural diffusion and cause to a degree a transformation of their social values and their life styles.

International Migration, Citizenship, Identities and Cultures: Japanese-Filipino Children (JFC) in the Philippines

Nuqui, C. G. — 2009-06-25

The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) recognizes every child's right to a name and to acquire nationality. However, these rights are elusive in the case of some Japanese-Filipino Children (JFC).

The number of interracial marriages and unions in Japan is growing because of the internal conditions in Japan and as a result of globalization. The influx of Filipino women entertainers in Japan during the 1980s, which continues up to the present, resulted in the birth of about 200,000 JFC.

Initial findings from the data of the Development Action for Women Network, a Philippine NGO, show that the JFC in the Philippines would want to meet their fathers. They wish to finish their studies and want their fathers to support their education. Some want to claim their Japanese nationality. Most mothers want their children to be recognized as Japanese because they see this as a passport to go to Japan and be able to work there again.

Under Japanese law, nationality is given to children of mixed marriages and to illegitimate children only when recognition of the child by the Japanese father comes before the birth of the child.

The JFC and their mothers are fighting for the children's claim to their Japanese nationality. But is Japan ready to embrace into their fold children of mixed marriages?

Book Reviews

2009-06-25

International Migration, Multi-Local Livelihoods and Human Security: Perspectives from Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America

2009-06-25

News and Events

2009-06-25

The Dynamics of Teleworking: Case Studies of Women Medical Transcriptionists from Bangalore, India

Noronha, E., D'Cruz, P. — 2009-05-27

Although teleworking promises full-time workforce participation within the protective sanctuary of the home, issues relating to work–life balance, identity, career, collectivization, control, trust and commitment remain to be answered. Through the adoption of a multiple case study design and within-case and cross-case analyses, the present work is aimed at generating propositions that could provide insights into the complexities of teleworking. The findings highlighted that although teleworking provides some flexibility, how time and roles are managed depends on the ages of children, the availability and perceived trustworthiness of support, the family constellation and the number of activities the family member is involved in, against the backdrop of organizational expectations of work output. The attempt to strike a balance between work and family could leave the participants with a sense of strain, offset by gains in terms of reassurance about family well-being and of fulfilment of teleworkers’ needs and desires to work. Employer controls to ensure quality and quantity of output add to the pressure, while simultaneously facilitating the transition from office-based to home-based work through the provision of direction and focus. Teleworking is considered to be a means of alternatively defining one's career either in terms of a professional orientation, finding equilibrium between one's personal and professional life, or of getting free. At the same time, the absence of traditional organizational referents and of physical proximity did not impede employee collectivization and redressal, even though spatial distribution of colleagues created isolation and loneliness.

Gender Relations in IT Companies: An Indian Experience

Shanker, D. — 2009-05-27

With the emergence of the new economy, the working environment in several sectors in the developing nations has changed greatly. These changes anticipate a departure from conventional labor methods and practices towards a new organizational structure. Are these changes characterized by gender neutrality within and outside the workplace? Or do the new workplaces reproduce the latent hierarchical social structure of the domestic sphere? This article attempts to examine the emerging ‘new identity’ of Indian women in IT companies. Analysis of data on organizational structure and management practices reveals the possibility of an alternative vision of gender relations in IT industries. This study tries to understand the extent to which the employment of women in these new industries alters social relations within the work place and outside.

Gender and Coastal Zone Biodiversity

Srinath, K. — 2009-05-27

The term ‘gender’ refers to socially determined roles and responsibilities of women and men and the relationship between them in society. The concept is widely misunderstood and seen as synonymous with women. If biodiversity is to survive, women and men both need to play a role in its management. To examine gender concerns in the use of coastal bio-resources, a study was undertaken in two villages in a typical coastal region in India. An attempt was made to identify the major changes in coastal zone biodiversity, over a period of two decades, during which great strides have occurred in marine fisheries and aquaculture. A participatory appraisal of the positive and negative impacts of the changes on food and livelihood security revealed that development efforts in general improved the infrastructure for improving income, education and health. Sustainability issues such as the conflict between paddy and shrimp farming, disease in coconuts, drinking water scarcity and pollution have contributed to deterioration of coastal zone bio-resources and pose challenges to basic household food security as perceived by both women and men. Biodiversity interventions help to maintain bio-resources, provide diverse occupations and ensure food security for the rural poor. Conservation of biodiversity can be achieved through the use of scientific innovations integrated with development schemes and linking them with self–help groups of women and men. Some successful biodiversity interventions by research institutes and development departments in the country that have been useful in educating the stakeholders on the importance of coastal zone management and maintenance of bio-resources are also discussed.

Deforestation and its Impacts on Indigenous Women: A Case from the Chittagong Hill Tracts in Bangladesh

Dhali, H. H. — 2009-05-27

In 1994, Bangladesh ratified the Convention on Biological Diversity, agreed at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. The country has also adopted various policies, approaches and programs to protect forests in the country. Despite this, deforestation continues apace in this country. The Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), an area of 5093 square miles (about 10 percent of Bangladesh), is a hilly–forested area with 12 indigenous groups, where extensive deforestation has already occurred. This is the main cause of hardship for forest dwellers, especially the indigenous peoples. As the Women Environment and Development (WED) debate has recognized, women are the main victims of any environmental crisis. This study analyzes the impacts of deforestation on the indigenous women in the CHT. It has been found from this study that there is an interwoven relationship between the indigenous women and the forest and they are severely affected by deforestation.

Book Reviews

2009-05-27

Recent Books on Gender and Technology

2009-05-27

Conference Reports

2009-05-27

News and Events

2009-05-27

Introduction to the Theme Issue on Human Trafficking

Lie, M., Lund, R. — 2008-10-08

Human Trafficking and New Patterns of Migration

Truong, T.-D. — 2008-10-08

Defining Trafficking through Empirical Work: Blurred Boundaries and their Consequences

Skilbrei, M.-L., Tveit, M. — 2008-10-08

The definition of trafficking in the United Nation (UN) Protocol on Trafficking from 2000 is the starting point of different countries’ definition of trafficking. In Norway, as in other countries, there are still difficulties in identifying victims of trafficking in the day-to-day work of the police, social workers and others. The definitions of and demarcation between human trafficking and human smuggling have grave consequences for legal approaches, policies and help offered. It is thus necessary to continually discuss how to define trafficking if we want the term to be a fruitful tool in framing the phenomenon—which in turn impacts the ability to aid victims, prevent victimization and to prosecute traffickers.

In this article we approach this matter through two qualitative studies among Nigerian women in prostitution in Norway. Their stories are complex and their travels long, and along the way, their migration and prostitution has been organized by different agents. These agents were sometimes human traffickers; other times smugglers of migrants. In this article, we explore which is which, with the definition in UN's Trafficking Protocol as our starting point. This article is an attempt to analyze the complexities of the women's situation in order to link theoretical debates on trafficking definitions with women's lived experiences.

Desiring the 'Other': Prostitution Clients on a Transnational Red-Light District in the Border Area of Finland, Estonia and Russia

Marttila, A.-M. — 2008-10-08

This article examines cross-border prostitution in the border areas of Finland, Estonia and the Russian Federation, concentrating on male Finnish sex buyers. One of the most active prostitution markets in Europe is found in this region, largely because of the considerable gap in the standard of living between Finland and its eastern neighbors. Against the background of global, gendered and ethnic inequalities, this article aims at positioning the male client in the regional prostitution scene. It argues that globalization processes have created a new space for the sex trade beyond state borders which may have opened up new opportunities for women from the post-Soviet and developing countries, but has also created new spaces of action for ‘western’ sex buyers.

Agency or Illness--The Conceptualization of Trafficking: Victims' Choices and Behaviors in the Assistance System

Brunovskis, A., Surtees, R. — 2008-10-08

Trafficking in women has become a high profile issue during recent years. However, there is still relatively little attention being paid to assistance systems for the victims, more particularly to how assistance is conceptualized and implemented. In this article, the authors argue that there are attitudes and values inherent in many of these systems that are not necessarily conducive to the recovery of trafficking victims. Through an analysis of interviews with institutional representatives in Southeast Europe and victims of trafficking, the authors argue that there is a tendency to pathologize women's choices to migrate and to enter prostitution as a means of explaining this ‘deviant’ behavior. This, in turn, opens up the use of restrictions for victims of trafficking in the form of limitations in and supervision of communication with people outside the assistance system and also closed shelter facilities. Restrictions may infantilize program beneficiaries and impact their agency and ability to dissent and negotiate within the program framework. Further, they reflect a focus on how these women and their behaviors seemingly need to be corrected to conform to a preconceived idea of a victim of trafficking and a ‘rehabilitated victim’. To some extent, these beliefs are also adopted by trafficked women and girls who receive assistance.

Sexual Violence and Proximate Risks: A Study on Trafficked Women in Mexico City

Acharya, A. K. — 2008-10-08

Trafficking in humans is an integral part of the social and economic fabric in Mexico as in other parts of the world. This practice causes intolerable degradation and suffering for the girls and young women involved and are treated as a commodity. The process results in a risk to their physical and mental health, and in particular, to their sexual health, which I have explored in this research. Sixty trafficked women currently working as commercial sex workers were interviewed using a semi-structured questionnaire, and 13 in-depth interviews were conducted in the La Merced red-light area of Mexico City. Trafficked women in Mexico are basically young women, have little education and are mostly unmarried. The women I interviewed were working in cheap hotels and were living with a pimp. In the week prior to the interviews, 70 percent were beaten with objects, 100 percent were abused verbally, 28 percent were burned by lighting cigarettes, 36 percent were threatened with being killed and 22 percent were raped by clients and traffickers. Unwanted pregnancies and forced abortions were common; 65 percent had had at least one abortion. Almost all women had been infected by sexually transmitted diseases. The present research concluded that sexual violence has serious physical and mental health risks on trafficked women and it needs an urgent response from the government not only to provide health facilities to these women but also to eradicate women trafficking in Mexico.

Feminism, Conflict and Disasters in Post-tsunami Sri Lanka

Hyndman, J. — 2008-10-08

Social relations, including gender, are destabilized by conflict and disaster. Approaches informed by feminist thought illustrate this by probing the ways in which different identities and locations produce inequality, violence and disparate power relations. In this article, a feminist approach to development and disasters is advocated. In Sri Lanka, a country at war on and off for more than two decades, the social impact of the 2004 tsunami cannot be divorced from the pre-existing landscape with its layers of conflict, nationalism and economic disparities. This article explores the ways in which the tsunami changed people's relations of home, family and security for those who lost a spouse. Interviews with 40 widows and widowers along the east coast of Sri Lanka in February 2006 suggest that the tsunami not only reorganized gender relations among specific ethno-national groups, but also changed the meaning of ‘widow’ with war widows and tsunami widows positioned differently within post-tsunami society and across ethnic groups. The study shows that men with surviving young children who lost their wives view remarriage as highly desirable. The Sri Lankan government's policy of no-build buffer zones along this coast has also increased insecurity with many people still living in temporary accommodation two years after the tsunami. The prospect of remarriage for widowed women is fraught, yet more appealing as a way to mitigate insecurity than it was pre-tsunami. The author argues that a ‘feminism and disaster’ lens should be coupled with a ‘feminism and development’ approach to understanding change in the wake of the tsunami. Focusing on gender alone is insufficient.

Book Reviews

2008-10-08

Recent Books on Gender and Technology

2008-10-08

Conference Reports

2008-10-08

News and Events

2008-10-08

Can Career-Minded Young Women Reverse Gender Discrimination? A View from Bangalore's High-Tech Sector

Clark, A. W., Sekher, T.V. — 2008-08-26

Women's status in India is mixed, with many positive and negative indicators. The devaluation of daughters leads parents to resort to sex-selective abortions and infanticide— practices currently spreading to previously unaffected areas. In relation to this negative picture, interviews with women employed in the Information Technology (IT) sector in Bangalore suggest its opposite: a partial reversal of daughter devaluation is currently emerging in the families of young women in India's high-tech sector. Studies on employment in the IT sector in India have not adequately considered important long-term, intergenerational impacts of this new development on the whole culture of daughter devaluation.

This article strives to fill this gap by illustrating that when young women find opportunities to improve their financial autonomy, mobility and social acceptance in a male-dominated society, there are far-reaching implications for social demographic change, and also for gender equality, through the evolution of the two-income family model departing from the concept of the male breadwinner. This change may have wider

Mainstreaming Gender in Water Management: A Critical View

Panda, S. M. — 2008-08-26

This article offers a critical perspective on gender mainstreaming in water management in India by exploring the linkages between pre-given notions of ‘gender’ in mainstreaming rhetoric and selected practices of water management. Evaluative studies have shown that gender mainstreaming is not effective if restricted to practices that try to make women visible or simply add a gender component in an intervention program. The much publicized ‘Women, Water and Work’ campaign initiated by India's Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA) by and large excluded men, and the newly-instituted water sector reforms, which promote privatization and marginalize women in the process, are selected for analysis to distill the meanings of gender and social interests. Prospects for effective gender mainstreaming in water management will hinge on how the main agenda can address the transformation of gender relations and treat water as a human right so as to realize the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in developing countries.

Identity, Technological Communication and Education in the Age of Globalization

Acharya, S. — 2008-08-26

The purpose of this article is to bring together various elements that portray the complex conceptuality of cultural identity within technological society. It engages in a theoretical inquiry into the questions of how the wide-ranging uses young people are now making of new information and communication technologies and global media may possess the potential to transform their cultural identity and how educational institutions should understand and respond to this evolving cultural reality. In discussing these questions, it refers to recent theories of cultural identity, especially as they relate to the increasing volume of global flows of ideas and ideologies, people, finance and cultural practices, and specific theories about the nature of technology in terms of explicating the relationship between society and technology. Finally, it concludes with implications for gender in educational practices of technology use.

‘We now live...in an open space-time, in which there are no more identities, only transformations’ (Zygmunt Bauman)

Disaster Mitigation and Furthering Women's Rights: Learning from the Tsunami

Akerkar, S. — 2008-08-26

Vulnerability has long been accepted as an important factor in post-disaster recovery which affects the ability of the survivors to recover from multi-dimensional impacts. This comparative and cross-cultural study of the effects of tsunami on women in four countries looks more closely into the factors and processes that have led to the exclusion of certain groups of women from relief and recovery assistance. These include female heads of households, widows, the elderly and those belonging to marginalized groups such as migrants and stateless communities. Examining the current gender-neutral framing of social protection systems in the disaster areas and their operations, I show that vulnerability is not only an outcome of localized and individual dimensions like age, gender and marital status but that they have deeper relations with national and global powers who perpetuate institutionalized discrimination through such systems, and how they are unable to give these groups of women the much needed protection and assistance to live with dignity. A case is made for the recognition of compounded discrimination based on the fact that their vulnerable positions prior to the disaster have indeed led to their exclusion from relief and recovery activities, leaving them poorer and worst-off. Further, to redress this trend I propose a women's human rights strategy in disaster management which adopts as its

Book Reviews

2008-08-26

Recent Books on Gender and Technology

2008-08-26

Comparative Studies on Policy and Gender Implications of Biotechnology and Biosafety in Thailand and China

2008-08-26

Norwegian Scholarships for the Master's and Doctoral Programs

2008-08-26